A History of Giant Puppets, from Processional Giants to Little Amal

A puppet twice the height of a person changes a street. Crowds look up, children follow, traffic stops. The history of giant puppets is a story of towns, churches, protesters and theatre companies all discovering that effect, from a Portuguese procession in 1265 to a twelve-foot refugee girl walking across Europe.

What counts as a giant puppet

Size is relative. The UNIMA World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts entry on giant figures puts it simply: “The definition of a giant is a matter of scale, either in relation to other figures or to live performers.” It also notes that “Giants, gigantes, gigantones are widespread in Europe.”

Most giants were made to be walked, not acted. “In most cases their use is more processional than dramatic,” the encyclopedia says, “and it is not uncommon for figures to be mounted on floats.”

Processional giants: Évora, London, Douai

The earliest dated giant in the encyclopedia is religious: “In Portugal there are references as early as 1265 to the use of a gigantone in a religious procession in Evora symbolizing one of the evils conquered by Christ.” In London, “the giant figures of Gog and Magog, guardians of the city, have been paraded through the streets since the time of King Henry V.”

Douai’s giants date back at least to the late Middle Ages; the encyclopedia’s two entries give 1480 and the 16th century. “Today the main figure is over 8 metres tall, weighs over 300 kilos and requires eight bearers.” The processional giants and dragons of Belgium and France have been on UNESCO’s list since 2008, with figures “measuring up to nine metres in height and weighing as much as 350 kilos.”

Date	Where	Figure	Size
1265	Évora, Portugal	Gigantone in a religious procession	Not stated
Henry V’s reign	London	Gog and Magog	Not stated
1480 or 1500s	Douai, France	Gayant and family	Over 8 m, eight bearers
Annual	Simla, India	Dussehra effigies, burnt	15 m
1969	United States	Bread and Puppet’s Cry of the People for Meat	5 m rod puppets
1993	France	Royal de Luxe’s giant fallen from the sky	9 m string puppet
1997	Marin Headlands	Antenna’s Pandemonium	35 feet
2021 on	Europe, US and beyond	Little Amal	12 feet

Effigies and rituals beyond Europe

Giants are not only European. For Dussehra in India, “Vividly painted puppets 15 metres high, made with a bamboo framework covered in paper, are dressed and carried through the town and then burnt ten days into the festival.” In Central Africa, the Pende “carries a mbambi puppet 6 to 10 metres high deep into the bush at the end of a masked dance.”

Chinese New Year dragons need “three, five, even ten carriers that use rods.” Many of these figures are built to be destroyed, as are the fallas of Valencia, which “are burnt at the conclusion of the festivities.”

How giants are built and carried

The simplest giant is “no more than a head mounted on a pole, with a long costume falling from the shoulders to conceal the operator.” Larger ones “may be built on lightweight frames or even made of wicker or basketwork,” often on a harness “so as to diminish the risk of damage to the back.”

Then come the tricks for very big figures. Because they must be seen “by a large number of spectators and from afar,” puppeteers may work on stilts, and “Due to their weight, giant puppets are often placed on hidden chariots.”

The twentieth century: theatre takes the giant

Bread and Puppet

In most accounts of giant puppet theater history, the turning point comes in New York. The encyclopedia is direct: “Giant puppets really came into their own in the West with the Bread and Puppet Theater, one of the most influential and inspirational groups of the 20th century.” Bread and Puppet’s own 60-year history dates the name to 1963 in New York, and in 1970 the company moved to Vermont.

In the summers of 1965 and 1966 it staged “large scale outdoor pageants in some of the poorest neighborhoods of New York City.” By 1967 it was protesting the Vietnam War “with rod puppets of impressive size,” and its 1969 show used puppets with “a crew of six manipulators.” Bread and Puppet’s masks belong to what mask theatre is and how masks work; its giants belong here.

Théâtre du Soleil and Royal de Luxe

In 1970 Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil “played certain scenes from 1789 with giant rod puppets that required a collective effort of elevated manipulation.” Royal de Luxe, founded in 1979, built Le Géant tombé du ciel (1993), “a string puppet 9 metres high,” and later a giraffe 12 metres tall “needing twenty manipulators.”

Puppets in the street, and Little Amal

Protest groups took up the form. The organizer David Solnit made his first “at a workshop preparing for a 1989 Hiroshima Day demonstration at Livermore,” and later wrote that “giant puppets escalated the scale of our presence at street actions.”

Little Amal, “the 12 foot puppet of a 10 year old Syrian refugee child,” was built by Handspring Puppet Company, makers of the War Horse puppets. As of October 2026, The Walk Productions says she has travelled to 181 towns and cities in 18 countries since July 2021.

A Bay Area thread: Snake and Antenna’s giants

Chris Hardman met Bread and Puppet in Vermont in the late 1960s. Its “giant puppets and huge, stark generic masks” stayed with him, and in the Bay Area he made giants for three decades, first with Snake Theater’s location plays and protests, then with Antenna Theater.

Year	Work or event	Place	Figures
1977	Houseboat protest (Snake)	Sausalito waterfront	“massive puppets”; Cardboard People
1978	Somewhere in the Pacific (Snake)	Fort Cronkhite beach	A giant street puppet in a red dress
1991	Bay Day procession	Fort Mason to Aquatic Park	Giant endangered species
1992	The Appearance of Civilization	Rodeo Beach	Giant Columbus and Las Casas
1995	Skin & Bones/Flesh & Blood	San Rafael recycling center	“enormous rod puppets”
1997	Pandemonium	Fort Barry, Marin Headlands	“35-foot-tall puppets”
2006	Fire and Ice benefit	Sausalito	“puppet parades”

The 1977 puppets were Snake Theater’s, made to confront the developers of Waldo Point Harbor. Antenna’s 1991 Bay Day procession was planned to be led by “giant puppets of endangered and extinct species,” the start of its ecotheatre for Bay Day. In 1992, The Appearance of Civilization’s giant Columbus and Las Casas crossed Rodeo Beach at night.

In 1995 a “chorus line of enormous black-lit skeleton puppets” danced at a recycling center, and in 1997 Pandemonium’s 35-foot puppets filled the Headlands. Sausalito’s millennium celebration, the Big Bang, had giant puppets too. Antenna’s wider new theater forms, from Walkmanology to processions, grew from the same street instinct.

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